To Kill A Dead Man
by Hekate1308
Summary: There was little use in killing a dead man, but he understood his murderer. Major Sholto character piece.


**Author's note: My obsession with minor characters. Again. Here's a piece on Major Sholto. **

**I don't own anything. **

There was little use in killing a dead man, but he understood his murderer.

He had killed the young recruits, as surely as if he had shot them himself. The commander was responsible for the soldiers; every death was his fault. In a normal battle situation, deaths were inevitable. He could live with that, could see it as part of his duty to call the men's families and send their remains home.

But what had happened to these recruits hadn't been normal. He had made a mistake, and they had paid for it.

He should have died with them. He had died, in a way, although only later.

They day they had thrown him out was the day he died.

They called it retirement, of course. Until his mistake he had been a good soldier and anything else would have been admittance on their part that they had been wrong when they had made him commander.

He could live with the newspapers, calling his decision an "abominable miscalculation", "the last try of an aging Major to get glory" and other things; he could live with his dismissal; but the moment he gave it away, he knew he couldn't live without his uniform. He had always known, in a way; had always known it was a part of him he couldn't part with; but the act of holding it out to a young Corporal, who snatched it from his hands, making clear that he approved of his leaving it behind, was more than he could bear.

He applied to have to the right to keep it. Without the uniform, he was no one. He had long ago forgotten what it was like to be a civilian; he was too old and tired to learn again. He needed the uniform.

Even if it meant he had to go through the humiliating process of being approved to keep it. Every time his phone rang and someone, a voice that told of many similar phone calls and had lost much of its humanity over the years of talking to people professionally, asked for another document or informed him that he hadn't been approved yet, he knew that the person at the other end knew, knew who he was and wondered why he should be allowed to keep the uniform.

But eventually, he was approved and he got it back, the uniform that defined him, the uniform he'd hoped to wear until he died.

He'd hoped to wear it proudly. He couldn't do that. But he could wear it, like the second skin it had become over the years.

He didn't want to live in a city. He didn't want to live anywhere people knew him. He could have lived with the shame, but many of the recruit's families lived in London, and he didn't want to add to their pain by accidentally meeting them on the street.

He wouldn't know. He had never met any of them. He had been injured himself, and by the time he could leave the hospital, the funerals had already taken place. But they knew him. The mail he had been getting was proof of that. Letter after letter was full of hate, anger, disbelief. They demanded explanations he couldn't give them.

So he decided to live in the country. He had enough money to purchase a house and a piece of land, and to keep constantly changing employees. He had almost forgotten how much money he had always had – his family had always been wealthy. It hadn't been important in the army. It was now.

All his employees – from the cleaning lady to the nurse he needed to give him shots (and what little inconvenience he had, if he compared it to the rookies who had died in the field) had to sign a secrecy agreement. It wasn't his idea. If he had had his way, he would have faced any threat; but the police were convinced that the threats should be taken seriously and he was forced to submit to them, submit to a life of cowardice, while his uniform hung in his closet, mocking him for his want of courage. He had never run from an enemy, and now he was hiding.

He had died when he had left the army, but he was still alive enough to feel ashamed.

When there was someone ringing his door bell, again and again, until he told the housemaid to see who it was, because even though he didn't want to see anyone, it was clear they weren't going anywhere, and a woman stormed in and introduced herself as Linda Karsten, he was relieved.

He remembered all their names. Since that day, not one of them had left him; he would be reminded of them every day, when he was reading the paper or drinking tea or walking in the garden.

_Jefferson liked his tea without milk._

_Tumpson had hay fever._

_Denvers always turned when he heard planes approach. _

He recognized her name. She was the mother of David Karsten. He had been one of the first to die, before it became clear how bad their situation was, that their commander had led them right into the midst of the enemy, and that made it easier and at the same time more difficult to remember.

He had died still having confidence in him.

He looked into Linda Karsten's eyes and felt nothing but relief. She had written him a letter, one of the most vicious ones, demanding justice.

Maybe the wait for this moment had been his just sentence, he thought. He was alone, he was nothing anymore. No Major, no man.

He expected her to scream, or attack him, but she did neither.

She wanted to. He could see she wanted to.

But then she looked at him, and he didn't know what she saw, but suddenly she slumped down on the sofa and asked for tea.

It wasn't until they were both holding cups in their hands that she spoke again.

"I hated you" she said slowly. "I hated you. From the moment I heard of his – I hated you."

He could understand. He would have been surprised if she didn't hate him. Many commanders were hated by dead soldiers' families. And she had a reason.

He said nothing.

She looked at him and took another sip.

"But – you here, so alone... I couldn't hate you anymore." She laughed. "I actually thought about harming you. I thought about what it would be like to come here and murder you".

He didn't tell her that he wished she had.

He barely said anything when she began to cry, the tears running down her cheeks, without sobbing, without making any sort of noise, or when she began to talk about her boy.

He simply told her what he had thought about David Karsten. He had been a good solider; exactly the sort of boy he'd be glad to see joining his regiment.

She told him that David Karsten had liked him, that he'd been a good commander. He thought that reproaches would have been easier to bear.

When she left, she took his hand and said, "Goodbye, Major Sholto" and he was shocked when he realized how much time had passed since he'd last been called by his rank.

Linda Karsten left and he continued his lonely existence.

It was only a matter of time before someone else found him, of course; he hadn't thought it would be him, but later, when he went through the soldiers he had known, he decided that it couldn't have been anyone else.

Captain John Watson.

The best doctor his old regiment had ever seen, who had been invalided home from Afghanistan a year before his dismissal.

He had been sad to see him go. He had been one of the best soldiers he had ever met, dedicated, brave. Maybe he had enjoyed dangerous missions a bit too much, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

John Watson wouldn't have it easy in the civilian life, he was sure.

As it turned out, he was right and wrong.

John Watson found him at the time when the depression he had predicted (when he had still been an active Major and never thought that he would be gone in less than a year's time) had long gone. After he had met a madman who had turned his life around.

He didn't know. He didn't pay much attention to the news and rarely accessed the internet. But when John Watson came knocking on his door again and again, convinced his house maid to give him his former commander's phone number and kept leaving message after message, he listened and found out about Sherlock Holmes. He read the blog too.

John Watson had found a new purpose in life. That didn't explain why he would try to see him, however.

Against his will, he grew curious and allowed him in.

John Watson was no longer the soldier he had known, but he was happily living with a strange man who had invented his own job and wanted to see him because he was worried about him, it would seem.

Caring had always been one of his strengths. Sometimes it had been his weakness too – the reason he had got injured was that he had to help a dying solider, and no one could hold him back. If Bill Murray hadn't dragged him out of the field, he would have died.

John Watson had found a new purpose, and now he wanted him to do so as well.

There would be no cure for him. He had led young soldiers to their deaths, and he would pay for it until the last semblance of life left the shell he had become.

He never went out, not caring for the world, no matter how hard the doctor tried to persuade him. He kept reading the blog. Sherlock Holmes seemed an interesting man, although perhaps not a good one; but he was John Watson's friend. There could be no doubt about that. He had cured the doctor's limp, he took him with him on cases so he wouldn't get bored, he gave him something to do.

It was just what he would have done – send a bored soldier on more missions, keep him occupied.

When Sherlock Holmes died, John Watson stopped calling. He didn't try to reach him. Every man had to deal with his grief in the way he saw fit.

Sherlock Holmes returned, and still John Watson didn't call. He didn't mind. The doctor had enough to deal with.

He was surprised when he received the invitation to John Watson's wedding. He was going to ignore it, like every invitation he had got since he had left the army, but then he thought of the doctor, losing his purpose, finding another one only to lose it again and finally regaining it, and meeting the woman he wanted to spend his life with – he couldn't say no.

So he came.

He didn't enjoy himself, but he never enjoyed himself anymore. And when Sherlock Holmes gave him the piece of paper and he found out he was about to be murdered, he was the closest to happy he had been in months.

He would go done fighting, like a soldier should, in the uniform he had worn his whole life.

All it took was one sentence from Sherlock Holmes to shake his determination.

_We wouldn't do that to John Watson_.

He was right. He couldn't do that, not to the bright young soldier who had tended to many wounds, including his own, he couldn't do that to the man who'd found his place in life and tried to help him.

He opened the door.

He might not be alive any longer, but he couldn't die today. Nor on any other day when Captain John Watson still cared about him.

He didn't know much, but of that he was sure.

**Author's note: More a character piece than anything else, but I wanted to give him more character than we saw. As stated before, it's my crazy passion. **

**Pleas review. **


End file.
